Volunteers fill up sandbags at Los Angeles County Fire Station 89 in Agoura Hills for residents who’s homes may be affected by flooding after the Woolsey fire swept through the area last week. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

About a dozen people went to work Monday morning filling sandbags and hauling them away at Fire Station 89 off the 101 Freeway in Agoura Hills, busily preparing for another potential disaster this week: With rain in the forecast, residents and emergency officials said they are worried that hillsides scarred in the recent Woolsey fire could mean flooding and mud flows.

Volunteers fill up sandbags at Los Angeles County Fire Station 89 in Agoura Hills for residents whose homes may be affected by flooding after the Woolsey fire swept through the area last week. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Volunteers fill up sandbags at Los Angeles County Fire Station 89 in Agoura Hills for residents whose homes may be affected by flooding after the Woolsey fire swept through the area last week. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

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Volunteers fill up sandbags at Los Angeles County Fire Station 89 in Agoura Hills for residents whose homes may be affected by flooding after the Woolsey fire swept through the area last week. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

L to R; Brenda Pasqua, Brent Kast and his son Dean, 10, fill sandbags at Los Angeles County Fire Station 89 in Agoura Hills for residents whose homes may be affected by flooding after the Woolsey fire swept through the area last week. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Volunteers fill up sandbags at Los Angeles County Fire Station 89 in Agoura Hills for residents whose homes may be affected by flooding after the Woolsey fire swept through the area last week. (Photo by David Crane, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG)

Cal Fire said containment on the fire Monday evening was at 96 percent, with just under 97,000 acres burned.

Brian Kast, a resident of Oak Park in Ventura County, said his home was spared from destruction. With the fire gone, now was time to prepare for rain — Kast was at Fire Station 89 on Monday with other residents, filling sandbags to hand out to their neighbors.

“We filled probably 500 in about two hours,” Kast said. “We’re running out of sand, which is a good thing.”

The National Weather Service said parts of Southern California could get between a quarter-inch to 1 inch of rain starting Wednesday.

Officials said that meant an increased risk of rock slides and debris flows in hilly areas and in the region’s canyons, where recent fires may have loosened the soil.

In January, rains that came after the Thomas fire resulted in flash flooding and mud flows in the Montecito area, killing 21 people.

Ken Kondo, a spokesman for the L.A. County Office of Emergency Management, said what is most worrying officials is the possibility of “pop-up thunderstorms” that could drop as much as 1 inch of rain in an hour.

L.A. County prepared a similar response for potential rain-related problems late last year when December rains followed the La Tuna and Creek fires that scorched areas of Sylmar, Sun Valley, Burbank and Glendale.

Damage was light in those rain storms, but Kondo said there was a potential for danger.

“We had debris and mud flows, we had flooding,” Kondo said. “We had a law enforcement vehicle that got stuck in the mud because the rain hit, then the mud flow came right after that.”

Kondo was at the Conrad H. Hilton Foundation building on Monday in Agoura Hills. The facility now serves as a temporary disaster recovery center where Woolsey fire victims can be connected with workers from a host of state, county and federal agencies.

Open since Saturday, the center has already helped hundreds of residents whose homes burned to the ground.

Many who arrived over the last three days were still reeling from the emotional toll of the destruction. Kondo said the center was the first place the victims could slow down and talk about what happened to them after days of living with friends or family, or staying in hotels.

“This is the first time that they can tell someone that they lost their home,” Kondo said.

City and county emergency officials said they hope that the same fire victims who were displaced for days won’t have to evacuate once again for the coming rain. But the option remains firmly on the table, said Malibu Mayor Rick Mullen.

“We know if we issue an evacuation order, (residents) may not want to do it,” Mullen said. “But nobody is taking this lightly.”

He said fire and city officials were preparing for the “worst-case scenario” — which could mean bouts of intense rainfall that douse burned canyon areas with more water than the ground can absorb in a short amount of time.

Conditions like that could trigger large mud flows that damage homes or trap vehicles, a potentially even more disastrous situation for the area than the fires were, Mullen said.

“Mudslides are a historic concern,” for Malibu, Mullen said, “but the scale of the denuding of our hillsides, we’ve never seen anything like this.”

Residents in need of assistance — including help with replacing lost records, filing insurance claims and applying for FEMA disaster assistance, as well as getting information on property cleanup, repair and rebuilding, among other services — can go to either the Agoura Hills or Malibu disaster assistance centers for help:

Joshua Cain is a crime and public safety reporter for the Southern California News Group, based at the L.A. Daily News in Woodland Hills. He has worked for SCNG since 2016, previously as a digital news editor in the San Gabriel Valley, helping cover breaking news, crime and local politics.